Newb question RE hardware RAID

[BradTheGeek]

I am about to setup FreeNAS on a PowerEdge 2590 Server with a Perc 6/i RAID controller. If I want to use the ZFS features of FreeNAS how should I configure the drives on the raid controller? Should I set each drive up as a single virtual drive with Raid 0? That seems the logical choice. Then each drive would be independently visible to FreeNAS for it to make zDevs and zPools from.

If this is the incorrect way to do this, please let me know. Also, are there any hardware controller settings that I should tweak for performance/stability concerns?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Neil Whitworth]

Throw away (or sell) the PERC - They don't play nice with FreeBSD and will just cause you problems (see this thread or search the forums for more examples)

Buy a m105 (or other supported HBA) and reflash to IT mode.

 

[Ericloewe]

Yes, individual RAID0s is the best solution you can get with a Perc.

However, that is far from an acceptable solution and has very well documented shortcomings. Things will most likely go wrong, so I strongly urge you to stick the path most take - LSI SAS 2008 and 2308 controllers in IT mode. The IBM M1015 is usually the cheapest such option.

 

[BradTheGeek]

Thanks for the info. I obtained this server very cheap as-is. I was afraid there may be issues like that. Back to the drawing board. Given my needs, I may even just run Linux with hardware RAID for my shares. I really wanted freeNAS though. Time will tell.